[mythtv-users] A paradigm shift is coming. Are you ready?

[Rich West]

Nicolas Will wrote:
> On Tue, 2008-02-12 at 10:18 -0600, Kevin Kuphal wrote:
>   
>> On Feb 12, 2008 9:35 AM, Brian Phillips <brian.phillips at gmx.net>
>> wrote: 
>>         jedi at mishnet.org wrote:
>>           Is
>>         the hardware there in video cards, but non-supported in
>>         Linux?  I read
>>         somewhere that directx was the method for using these GPUs to
>>         their fullest,
>>         so is linux therefore locked out of these GPUs to a point?
>>   This is exactly the problem.  Take nvidia for example, the premier
>> driver for Linux for HD playback IMO.  If I take the same card from my
>> MythTV box and put it in Windows with the stock drivers, my Athlon
>> 2000 PC could not play back HD content.  But, if I download the 30 day
>> trial of Nvidia's PureVideo player with accelerated drivers for
>> Windows, voila, my lowly processer can chew through HD no problem.
>> Drivers are the issue and until Linux gets *full* featured drivers
>> with the necessary hooks for applications to use them, it will always
>> lag behind and be more about the CPU than the graphics board.  
>>     
>
> This is where I fore see that nVIDIA will not be the GPU of choice for
> MythTV in the medium term.
>
> The Intel chpsets (965 and up) have pretty decent capabilities for what
> we want to do with them.
>
> They have all the good parts for MPEG2/H.264 acceleration.
>
> Now 2 things are happening these days. X is changing its infrastructure
> for video acceleration.
>
> Intel has released stuff that was only in the hands of a few people: the
> full specs. So expect a lot more people to be able to code on the Intel
> driver from now on.
>
> There is hope in having relatively cheap motherboards with integrated
> GPUs, one board less, one fan less, that will be able to do HD in all
> formats. The Intel chipset already has that nice way of adding ports
> (HDMI, DVI, Components, s-video, composite) through cheap add-on cards.
>
> I have such a combination. But I am currently using an nVIDIA card. The
> intel driver was not mature enough (v2.1) and lacked features. It was a
> complete rewrite from the i830 stuff, and only a limited people had
> access to the specs.
>
> I would be ready to bet that within 1 year we will all be laughing at
> our nVIDIA days.
>
> Then again, nVIDIA could wake-up.

IMHO, I see that having Intel graphics drivers as an option would be a
welcome addition to the mix of hardware for mythtv.  I am definitely in
the "slim/thin frontend client" camp, and for that purpose, I cannot see
the sense in tweaking up the horsepower of my slim/thin frontend clients
to push HD video content when the GPU's I already have can (and should
be able to) do it..

-Rich